Hope you all had a good holiday. Here’s welcoming you all to 2021 and wishing you a year filled with success, happiness and prosperity.

Sometimes its a lot easier to talk about an experience you have been through. Owing to the fact that on different occasions I experienced this rather painful procedure aforementioned in “Jai’s memoirs”, I felt the need to discuss further on it. As I have rather tiny/baby veins which are very difficult for my doctors to see when trying to set up an intravenous line, I’ve suddenly become accustomed to indwelling catheters “Port-a-Cath”

A catheter is a thin tube made from medical grade materials serving a broad range of functions. They can be inserted in the body to treat diseases or perform a surgical procedure. By modifying the material or adjusting the way catheters are manufactured, it is possible to tailor catheters for cardiovascular, urological, gastrointestinal, neurovascular, and ophthalmic applications.

In my case, a central venous catheter was used as a channel for giving drugs or fluids into a large-bore catheter positioned either in a vein near the heart. What exactly was being administered? Blood.
To do this, the doctor will make a needle puncture through your skin and into a large blood vessel. A small straw-sized tube (called a sheath) will be inserted into the vessel. The doctor will gently guide a catheter (a long, thin tube) into your vessel through the sheath using a video screen to show the position of the catheter as it is threaded through the major blood vessels and to the heart.

My reason for speaking up about this is not to give you cause to fear but rather to shed more insight into the procedure of inserting an indwelling catheter into a patient. Its a rather painful procedure as stated earlier and having experienced it in my major blood vessels mainly at the upper thigh regions and neck it becomes imperative to note the things one can do to avoid such a situation.

Recent discussion with some of my physicians made me aware that sometimes for a warrior who possesses tiny/baby veins, a bit of soft exercises such as walking frequently can aid in causing the veins to become more noticeable. Reason being that the vessels in the body comprise of arteries, veins as well as their smaller components of arterioles and venules. At the interface between the arterioles are the capillaries which help supply oxygenated blood to tissues from arterioles and take away deoxygenated blood to give to the venules. During exercise because of exertion, there is increased pressure in the arteries supplying blood to these capillaries. As a result of this, there is some ‘extravasation’ of fluid/plasma into the surrounding tissue space around capillaries i.e. some plasma leaks into surrounding tissue and makes the muscles hard and firm. The end result is that superficial veins found on the skin tend to bulge and become more visible.

Therefore, I would like to urge other warriors who frequently undergo the procedure of having an indwelling catheter due to baby veins to try to engage in soft exercises, nothing too strenuous. This would eventually cause your veins to bulge and become more noticeable overtime.

Reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catheter, accessed 19th October 2020

Dr. Woods-Orugboh, James F. (Mb;bs)
Senior Medical Officer at Paelon Memorial Hospital.